Mark Doiron
Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 552
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 Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 1:56 pm GMT |
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| ManWithNoName wrote: | | So how often do you get the summit to yourself? |
The summit? How about a whole National Park? And not just any park, but the most visited National Park in the entire U.S!!! Because that is exactly what happened to my son Curtis and I after exiting the AT at Clingman's Dome, Great Smoky Mountains National Park on June 8, 2004. Our plan was to be at the Clingman's Dome parking lot at sunrise so that we could pull my telescope out of the truck and observe the transit of Venus across the sun (remember that? First time in 122 years?). Unfortunately, it was very cloudy and there was no sun to be seen.  So, we noted the absence of vehicles and thought that was odd. Sure, it was cloudy and even misty, but isn't that why folks come to the Smokies? But, we loaded the gear into the truck and headed down the road. On the way down we came across this bear and stopped and watched him foraging by the side of the road. I figured that would last only a few seconds before a vehicle came the other direction and scared him off. But we sat there a good fifteen minutes before he finally got bored and took off straight up the side of the mountain. Boy, I wish my legs could carry me like that!
At the intersection further along with the road through the park we came to a closed gate. That was odd. It wasn't locked; just swung closed. It would normally be used to close off vehicle access in the winter when the road was impassable. But it was June and there was no snow in sight. And no people. Since this was adjacent to Newfound Gap, a very popular place for drive-through visitors to stop and see a little scenery, we thought it rather odd.
Anyway, we continued heading east out of the park on the main road through the park (from TN to NC), stopping occasionally to take a few images. After about 30 minutes it became pretty obvious that there was no one around. So I just stopped looking for places to park the truck and take an image and just started leaving it right in the road. The clouds were fascinating and made for some great images. But, I was looking for one particular image of an intermix of clouds and mountains and I wasn't finding it. That was disappointing, but luck plays a great role in such things. Anyway, after about an hour as we reached the base of the mountains we came across a park ranger. Except we knew that not by his uniform (military-style BDUs), but because he told us so. Now, a park ranger not in standard uniform wasn't so odd--just the evening before on the AT we'd run into another one in "civies" who was carrying a shotgun. When we nervously asked how the hunting was (and had scary thoughts of scenes from the movie "Deliverance"!), he explained that he was a park ranger out chasing down the boar that had wandered up to the higher altitudes and were damaging the trees. But I digress. Anyway, our BDU'd ranger told us that we needed to continue out of the park, not stopping anywhere, and to follow the directions given to us by any officials as we exited the park.
So we continued on driving, now without stopping. It wasn't too far before we saw the county sheriff, local police, the FBI, and a whole slew of park rangers. They told us to drive in the left (wrong) lane for a while, and we noted that they were using metal detectors in the other lane. And once we reached the park entry station there were hundreds of vehicles backed-up. That's where we learned that all entrances to the park were closed. Here we were in the most visited National Park in the country--and we had it all to ourselves for that brief time!
Anyway, we were actually heading up to Washington, D.C. (another story--during our time on the trail we weren't aware that former president Reagan had died, so that made the trip all that much more interesting!). Along the Blue Ridge Parkway I did find that clouds and mountains image that I'd searched in vain for in the Smokies. I shot the image several times, and though my favorite isn't the SP favorite, it is the most requested image I have from folks to blow up to poster size (a computer monitor does not adequately reveal some of the subtle shading in the image as a print does). Anyway, at Shenandoah we learned that the FBI had chased a most wanted criminal into the Smokies and that's why the park was closed. We never did learn whether he was still on the loose during our own private sojurn, though!
mark d. |
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